Radium Dials -Reply

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

John, Group,

"Aperans, John E. SFC" <aperansj@MCCLELLAN-CMLS.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
>
> Greetings, RADSAFERs:
> 
> First, belated thanx to all who answered my previous
> question on tritium compasses.
> 
> I guess this is as good a Friday topic as any.  Recently, while
> doing my sealed source inventory, I visited the Chemical
> Corps Museum, just down the road here.  
> 
> After the curator pled ignorance to the presence of any
> sources, I demonstrated to him that the control panels
> on four vehicles parked outside have radium dials.
> [THE METER WENT WILD!!!!!  (grin)]
> 
> On one amphibious vehicle of WWII vintage, the dial
> crystals were broken.  Dose rates on contact were recorded
> at 0.8 mR/hr with a G-M detector.  Wipe tests of the control 
> panel and dial faces showed no removable contamination 
> (dial faces had been spray painted over?).  
> 
> THE QUESTION.  Should I remove this control panel,  
> or am I worrying too much about it?  The curator says 
> that removing the dials, even if I replaced them with mock-ups,
> will destroy the vehicle's value as an otherwise fully functional
> artifact.  
> The control panel is open to the environment and it does 
> not take a lot of effort to climb into the vehicle, even though
> signs are posted to keep visitors off.  Is there some happy 
> middle ground?  
> 
> Please reply directly to me at the address below.
> John E. Aperans
> Health Physics Office, US Army Chemical School
> Ft McClellan, AL
> aperansj@mcclellan-cmls.army.mil
> Voice (205) 848-5044    FAX (205) 848-4615        DSN 865

There is no public health basis to remove the dials.

Young women who painted the dials (with fresh compounds at studio benches for
40-50 hours per week, some for years) had NO adverse effects, and they are
outliving their contemporaries working women of the period, except for a few
bone cancers and nasal carsinomas in a women who worked before 1925 who tipped 
their brushes in their mouth, and a slight excess of breast cancer (SMR=1.62
and 1.83 in the US and UK respectively) possibly associated with the long term 
external exposure from the studio benches in addition to any internal tissue
exposure from radon daughters from radon sources which were not exhaled before 
decay. 

All cancer cases (about 80? I can check) had exposures above 1000 rad, only 1
less than 2000 rad, as reported in 1981, with about 4000 cases, 2000 with body 
burden measurements and dose estimates. (Use whatever Q-value you like to
convert to rem. Robley Evans thought that about 3 was the appropriate number
instead of 20 for these conditions, and some argue that Q doesn't apply to the 
high-dose conditions, although that leaves open the thousands of cases with
"low-dose" conditions, eg, <100 rad?) See HPJ Vol 44, Suppl 1, 1983, Roessler, 
Schlenker, <and Lucas(?)>, Eds. reporting on the 1981 Int'l Conference in Lake 
Geneva, WI. 

(Note that more recent data on biological half-life in high body-burden cases
indicate that the original radium burdens, and therefore doses were
substantially higher. The original high-dose range is 80,000 - 100,000 rad.
See "Radium in Humans", by Bob Rowland, former Director of the CHR, that lists 
all the measured body-burden population. See also Costa Maletskos, 1996 HPS
Summer School, who has reported on recent work, with Robley Evans before his
recent death, and Bob Thomas, HPS Fellow and Honoree re the cancer cases, and
Otto Raabe, HPS President, re the current data. - Since the program is
terminated by radiation science policy, current data is only the deaths based
on SSN data.)  

Note also that then DOE shut down the Argonne Center for Human Radiobiology
(CHR) program starting in 1983. This had been set up at Robley Evans'
retirement in '69 to be for the life of the radium-burden population (for
persons, especially the dial painters, exposed before 1950). It produced the
wrong answers for the funding agencies purposes. Note also that RERF and other 
programs got the strong message about reporting "expected results". 

Thanks.

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
jmuckerheide@delphi.com
Radiation, Science, and Health, Inc.
=============================